Well, I'm finally home again after spending about a month in North Carolina, and honestly, I'm discernably unhappy about it. Most of that month was spent at Duke, learning Nanotechnology [among other, less formally learned things], and, though I do miss that aspect of it horribly, it is hard to describe verbatim, but I do think that North Carolina is my home.

Though I have never actually lived there [i.e., taken actual technical residence in the area], it seems that everything I have ever actually enjoyed of life has, for the most part, been there. My big brother [de facto though, not biological], is there, which of course probably accounts for a large part of it along with the fact that I met most of my few remaining friends there whether or not they live in the area; my past two summers have been spent at Duke, the one before that at Davidson, and several of my winters have been spent snowboarding and just watching the mountains there, though the last was...considerably less relaxing than the others, for reasons that don't need further explanation.

I suppose the point I am trying to get at is that times like these are always strange; when I come home from North Carolina, I mean. Often almost surreal. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, or be in the early phases of awakening in the morning, and will expect most certainly and instinctively to wake up in North Carolina in some form or another. And while that feeling does more or less recede after a good few months of sleeping in "my" own bed have passed, the underlying essence of it doesn't and won't. It is strange, really, to have been born and raised and living in a place that is not and never will be your home. It is rather disconcerting to be a visitor in a place you've lived your whole life... But, only three more hideous years left to spend here, I suppose.